East Texas Historical Journal
Volume 33 | Issue 1
Article 8
3-1995
Prostitution in Texas: From the 1830s to the 1960s
David C. Humphrey
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Humphrey, David C. (1995) "Prostitution in Texas: From the 1830s to the 1960s," East Texas Historical Journal: Vol. 33: Iss. 1, Article
8.
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIO~
27
PROSTITUTION IN TEXAS: FROM THE 1830s TO THE 19608
by David C. Humphrey
Prostitution has long been a feature of the Texas social landscape, yet it
has received slight attention from historians of the Lone Star State. There are
no statewide studies. Little has been written about prostitution in Texas either
prior to the Civil War or since the First World War. Much of what has been
written is scattered widely 1n works on individual cities and towns. The
historical overview of prostitution that follows, based on a variety of primary
sources and an extensive survey of secondary literature, seeks to summarize
what is known about the history of prostitution in Texas and to provide a point
of departure for further exploration.
Antebellum Texans were by no means unacquainted with prostitution as
a social phenomenon and as a municipal issue. In 1817, when Texas was st111
a Spanish province, nine prostitutes were expelled from San Fernando de
Bexar (San Antonio). Hispanic prostitutes resided in San Antonio from its
early days under Texas rule. Anglo prostitutes joined them during the 1840s
and 1850s, and by 1865 both groups were entrenched. I Galveston had
prostitutes from its beglnning in th~ 1830s, while the city of Houston was
barely three years old when, in 1839, a local newspaper decried the town'~
houses of ill fame. The next year dle Harris County Commissioners' Court
went so far as to provide for the licensing of Houston's brothels." General
Zachary Taylor's army attracted prostitutes dur1ng its e1ght-month stay in the
Corpus Christi area prior to invading Mexico in 1846, and in 1850 an observer
noted that the newly-incorporated town of Brownsville was "infected with
lewd and abandoned women" who kept "dens of cOITUption.,. Indianola and
Jefferson, on the other hand, survived their first years relatively free of
prostitution. but during the 1850s an influx of prostitutes spurred both towns
to pass ordinances suppressing bawdy houses. 1 Prostitution was thus not an
uncommon phenomenon in antebellum Texas, but neither was it rampant. In
many communities it was either unknown or occurred on such a small scale
that little public notice was taken. 4
From the Civil War to World War I, especially during the four decades
from 1870 to 1910, prostitution flourished in Texas and in other parts of the
United States. Each of Texas' eight largest cities developed at least one vice
district encompassing several city blocks - Austin's "Guy Town", Dallas'
"Frogtown" and "Boggy Bayou," EI Paso's Utah Street reservation, Fort
Worth's "Hell's Half Acre." Galveston's Postofticc Street district, Houston's
"Happy Hollow," San Antonio's "District," and Waco's "Two Street." Usually
located within a few hlocks of the downtown husiness district and the railroad
depot. each vice zone featured saloons, gambling resorts, and prostitutes who
worked mainly in bawdy houses and shack-like cribs but also in dance halls and
variety theatres. Charging from $.25 to $3 and sometimes up to $5, prostitutes
attracted local residents from all walks of life and an array of visitors that, while
David C. Humphrey
i~'
a historian with the DepllrlmcnJ of S{{llt', Washingwn. D.C.
28
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
varying from town to town, generally embraced sizable numbers of cowboys,
fann hands, other laborers, ranchers, businessmen, conventioneers, soldiers,
politicians, students, gamblers, and drifters. In EI Paso and San Antonio and
undoubtedly in other cities, some prostitutes had pimps, but brothel prostitutes
were managed and protected primarily by madams.'
Prostitution also became common on the Texas frontier foHowing the
Civil War, thriving at army forts, cow towns, railroad towns, and other
gathering points. From late in the 1860s to the J880s, soldiers stationed at
military posts in West Texas and along the Mexican border generated a lively
commerce in prostitution. Camp laundresses sometimes doubled as
prostitutes, while prostitutes also congregated at the sordid settlements that
sprang up near army posts, such as Saint Angela across the Concho River from
Fort Concho, Jacksboro adjacent to Fort Richardson, and "the Flat" below Fort
Griffin. 6 Elsewhere in West Texas the spread of prostitution reflected the
burgeoning ranching industry and the expanding railroad network. The
construction of the Texas and Pacific Railroad precipitated the founding of
Abilene, Colorado, and Big Spring, three ranching centers whose saloons,
gambling dens, and prostitutes attracted cowhands and other West Texans
from throughout the region. In the Panhandle during the 1880s the boisterous
but short-lived cattle towns of Tascosa and Mobeetie drew innumerable
cowboys to their respective vice districts, "Hog Town" and "Feather Hill:'
while during the 1890s Amarillo became a major cattle shipping center and
home to a wide open red-light district. 7
Prostitution flourished in fast growing communities elsewhere in Texas
between 1870 and 1910. rn Denison, Texarkana, Palestine, and Laredo. an
upsurge in prostitution accompanied the economic boom in each town
triggered by the coming of the railroad during the 1870s and 1880s. 8 Thriving
Corsicana had several brothels in the 1880s but its two largest, built during the
1890s, prospered by virtue of their location in the heart of the newlydiscovered Corsicana Oil Field. In Beaumont. Gladys City (near Spindletop),
Humble, and the Big Thicket hamlets of Sour Lake, Saratoga, and Batson,
Texas' first major oil boom attracted a swarm of prostitutes during the initial
decade of the twentieth century. Catering primarily to oil field workers, some
200 prostitutes crowded into Batson alone at the peak of the boom, many of
them working in bawdy houses on the town's main street.lf\ When thousands
of army and national guard troops mobilized along the U.S.-Mexican border
in 1916 following Pancho Villa's raids, prostitution mushroomed in Texas
border towns from Brownsville to El Paso. II Prostitution was not, on the other
hand, uncommon in more stable communities after the turn of the century,
among them Greenville and LaGrange. 12
Q
The managers of Texas brothels late in the nineteenth and early in the
twentieth centuries included a good many well-known madams - Austin's
Blanche Dumont, Fort Worth's Mary Porter, and EI Paso's Alice Abbott - but
most prostitutes labored in relative obscurity. Ranging in age from the teens to
the sixties but with an average age in the twenties, prostitutes who worked in
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
29
Texas were frequently on the go, prompted to move by the cyclical and
seasonal fortunes of Texas towns and by recurrent surges of anti-vice activity.
Some worked part-time while holding other jobs or engaged intermittently in
prostitution when money was short. 13 At anyone tlme, several of Tcxa,' larger
cities probably had more than 100 prostitutes each during the 1880s and at
least two to three times that number by 1910. Reliable figures are not easy to
establish, due to the transience of prostitutes, their illicit work, undercounting
by census-takers, inflated estimates by anti-prostitution groups, and variations
in the definition of what constituted prostitution. More than 150 prostitutes
marched en masse to an EI Paso city council meeting in 1886, while in 1913
a grand jury investigating prostitution in the city's Utah Street district reported
finding 367 prostitutes. Austin had at least 100 prostitutes during May and
June of 1880, while 239 prostitutes lived in Houston's vice district when
federal census-takers made their rounds in 1910. According to a local antiprostitution group, San Antonio had 630 "immoral women" in its vice district
in 1915 and many more outside i1. 14
Both Anglo and black women figured prominently among Texas
prostitutes. In Austin half or more of the prostitutes during the 1880s and
1890s were Anglos, most of them U.S.-born, while about two-fifths were
blacks and some seven percent Hispanics. In 1887 a Fort Worth newspaper
estimated that blacks composed more than half the prostitutes in Hell's Half
Acre. The rest were mostly Anglos. In Houston in 1917, sixty percent of the
women who headed households of prostitutes in the vice reservation were
Anglo, thirty-five percent black, and five percent HispanicY Hispanic
prostitutes were more common in San Antonio, EI Paso, and Laredo, at army
forts in West Texas, and generally in communities closer to the Mexican
border. 16 Anglo and black prostitutes lived and worked near each other in vice
reservations, but race had a significant bearing on how the districts operated.
Anglos predominated in brothels while blacks predominated in cribs. Most
bawdy houses maintained color separation among their inmates, and Anglo
houses refused, as a rule, to accommodate black men. On the other hand, it
was not unknown for black women to keep white inmates, and many white
men patronized black as well as while prostitutes.]7
The life of Tcxas prostitutes was difficult. While prostitution paid
comparatively well in an era when women's job opportunities were limited
and low-paying, few prostitutes achieved upward economic mobility. Most
wcre poor or not far from it and owned little personal property. Their economic
prospects deteriorated rapidly as they aged. If some may have found the life
easy or exciting, most were beset by the ever-present threats of violence,
venereal disease, and harassment by city officials. Many prostitutes used dmgs
such as opium, morphine, and cocaine, not uncommonly to commit suicide. A
considerable number probably left the trade after a few years, taking menial
jobs or possibly marrying or moving in with relatives. IR
Many Texas communities routinely passed ordinances outlawing
prostitution during the nineteenth century but paid only sporadic attention to
30
EAST TEXAS IIISTORICi\L i\SSOCIATIO:--J
them, lnfluenced as their leaders were by the conventional wisdom that
prostitution was ineradicable and therefore might as well be controlled.
Community officials also had a keen appreciation of the hefty fines and rents
prostitutes paid and the legions of male consumers they lured to town. Towns
thus condoned prostitution under ce11ain conditions. Prostitutes in larger cities
were expected to work within vice districts or else risk arrest and were [0
maintain fairly low profiles, such as by not streetwalking and by staying out
of "respectable" parts of town. As part of the accommodation, prostitutes in
many cities - Amarillo, Colorado, EI Paso, FOIi \Vorth, Galveston, Houstonacquiesced in regular assessmcnts of fines that enriched public coffers and
private pockets. In every major Texas city, prostitutes operated ourside vice
district boundaries but usually in smaller numbers. '9
While all of Texas' larger cities established de facto vice zones, Waco, EI
Paso, Dallas, and Houston also experimented with legal ones. Waco licensed
brothels during the 1870s. dropped the procedure carly in the lRROs, and then
enacted ordinances by 1KX9 that not only provided for licensing of prostitutes
and bawdy houses and required medical examinations but also explicitly
legalized prostitution within a precisely defined district. The system lasted
about a dozen years. By the turn of the century Waco's Two Street district,
located just a block from Dty Hall and the business district, boasted twenty-four
legal brothels..m EI Pa~o legally defined its vice district in 1890 and the next year
mandated medical inspections and registration of prostitutes with the pollce, a
scheme that apparently operated with liomc succ~ss into lhe twentieth century. 2 I
In 1907 the Texas legislature enacted a statute that recognized the legal authority
of cities to establish municipal vice districts while giving citlzens the right to
bring suit against bawdy houses not located in such districts. Dallas and
Houston promptly created official vice reservations by proscrihing prostitution
outside their boundaries. Houston's reservation lasted from 1908 to 1917,
Dallas' until 1914. Dallas requlred health department examinations. n
Despite the accommodation with prostitution in many towns between
1870 and 1910, the era also was marked by periodic outbursts of antiprostitutlon fervor. Often leading the way were crusading ministers, reformminded politicians, women's church groups, and angry citizens provoked by
the encroachment of prostitution upon their neighborhoods. Thc cleanup
campaigns had some sniking short term successes - in San Antonio in 1868.
Fort Worth in 1889, and El Paso in \904 - hut within a year the momentarily
quiescent vice zones in each city were booming again.~' While antiprostitution forces could claim some modest achievements prior to 1910, such
as the elimination of prostitution in some smaller communities and the
founding of rescue homes for prostitutes in Fort \Vorth, Dallas, San Antonio,
and other towns, the reformers' success in eliminating prostitution in larger
cities had been nil. 24
From 1911 to 1915 anti-prostitution groups in Texas waged a more
sustained and successful campaign as part of a national moral crusade by
Progressivc reformcrs to eliminatc prostitution's most visible [onn, the red-
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
3]
light district. Ministerial groups in most of Texas' larger cities and in smaller
towns such as Corsicana mobilized against "segregated vice" (a tenn
commonly applied to red-light districts), unleashing a torrent of words
warning Texans about the perils of white slavery and venereal disease. Joining
the churchmen at the forefront of the movement were civic groups such as El
Paso's Committee of 10 and the Law Enforcement League of San Antonio and
political reformers such as Austin's Mayor A. P. Wooldridge, bur no Texas city
went so far as to establish a municipal vice commission like those set up at the
time by twenty-seven other U.S. cities. The anti-prostitution forces succeeded
in shutting down vice districts in Dallas, Austin, and Amarillo by 1914.
Segregated vice in San Antonio, £1 Paso, and other cities took some punishing
verbal, political, and judicial blows but survived the assault. Entrenched
political groups, the police, many businessmen, and liquor and vice interests
backed the reservations, contending that their elimination would only make
matters worse by dispersing prostitutes Into residential and other parts of
towns beyond the control of the police. 25
In 1917 anti-prostitution crusaders gained a powerful ally in the U.S. War
Department. Expressing both Progressivism's moral zeal and its commitment
to social hygienc, Secretary of War Newton Baker ordered that American
soldiers training for World War I be protected from prostitution and venereal
disease. The doughboys must be "fit to fight." To Tcxas cities that already had
substantial military camps - EI Paso, San Antonio, and Galveston - and those
that wanted them - Fort Worth, Waco, and Houston - the War Department
minced no words: close your vice districts and enforce anti-prostitution laws
or suffcr the consequences. Local civic and ministerial groups, seizing the
opportunity to cripple protected vice, put pressure on city and county officials.
So did the newly formed Texas Women's Anti-Vice Committee and local
women's organizations. Politicians and businessmen noted that protected vice
suddenly had become an economic liability rather than an economic asset.
Between March and August 1917, Fort Worth, Houston, EI Paso, Galveston,
San Antonio, and Waco officially shut down their vice districts and stepped up
arrests of prostitutes. New federal and Texas laws during 1917 and 1918
mandated prostitution-free zones around military camps, local venereal
disease clinics, and detention of women suspected of venereal infection.
Women's groups set up "camp mother" committees to provide clean
entertainment for soldiers. The cumulative effect of these measures was to
reduce prostitution temporarily in the larger cities but not to eliminate it. Many
prostitutes moved on, but others stayed or relocated within or nearby the same
communities. Law enforcement was erratic. The situation in EI Paso remained
so unsatisfactory that Secretary Baker refused to build the new army training
center for which the city had been selected earlier. 2/\
World War 1 was barely over when prostitution entered a new phase
marked by the persistence of red-light districts and traditional bawdy houses
and also by the increasing significance of other fonns of prostitution. During
the 1920s and 19305 it became more common for prostitutes to work in hotels,
32
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
apartments, and rooming houses and to communicate with customers by
telephone. The "call girl" system had the added advantage of making police
detection difficult in an era when some cities were less tolerant of prostitution.
Prostitutes also adapted to the automobile, cruising the streets for clients,
arranging with taxi drivers to supply customers, and working in roadhouses
located just outside the city limits.}")
The Progressive era's assault on segregated vice notwithstanding, redlight districts still operated in a variety of Texas' cities and towns during the
1920s and 1930s, among them Beaumont, Borger, Corpus Christi, Corsicana,
Dallas, EI Paso, Galveston, San Angelo, and San Antonio. 2JI Galveston's came
closest to the classic turn-of-the century segregated district. Its wartime
closing only a momentary phenomenon, the venerable Postoffice Street
district had more than fifty Anglo brothels and at least two Hispanic brothels
in 1929, housing more than 300 prostitutes. One hundred fifty to 200 black
prostitutes worked in houses and cribs on adjacent streets and in the alleys.
City officials, the pollee, leading citizens, the newspapers, and even some
clergymen offered the traditional defense that a vice district provided the best
way to handle an irrepressible urban problem. Another 300 to 400 prostitutes
toiled more precariously outside the district, giving Galveston a total of 800 to
900 prostitutes in 1929.'9
San Antonio's vice district, in contrast, exhibited the deterioration that
beset many such districts nationally between the two world wars, Higherpriced prostitutes abandoned the district to operate as call girls in hotels. Many
of the larger brothels closed down. Wretched slum housing proliferated in the
district and the surrounding neighborhood. Violence and petty crime escalated,
particularly with the demise of the unofficial but powerful committee of
madams, pimps, saloon keepers, and others that had enforced its own version
of order in the district during the first quarter of the century. The Depression
brought additional women into the trade, drove down prices, and left many
prostitutes on the edge of survival. By late in the 193050, hundreds of lowpriced prostitutes, charging from $,25 to $1.50, walked the streets and solicited
from their jerry-built, one-room cribs. City officials openly tolerated the
district during most of the interwar period but exercised little effective control
over it. In the city as a whole in 1939 there were at least 2,000 prostitutes.
Roughly forty percent were Hispanics, with Anglos probably composing a
similar percentage. Black, Chinese, Japanese, American Indian, and Filipino
women made up the rest. JU
Prostitution took a different form in Austin, where the red-light district
had closed for good in 1913. Unhappy with the free-wheeling activity of some
prostitutes, city officials instituted an unofficial system for Anglo prostitutes
during the 1930s that required them to register with the police, live with four
or five other prostitutes in one of several downtown hotels located on lower
Congress Avenue, and abide by a set of strictly enforced rules that barred
pimps and forbade streetwalking or even appearing on the city streets after
noon. Black pros.titutes operated much more freely on the east side of town,
EAST TEXAS HISTORlCAL ASSOCIATION
33
but the police knew their identities and restricted them to East Austin. Austin
had few Hispanic prostitutes. While prostitution in the Texas capital thus
survived the closing of the red-light district, it re-emerged on a much smaller
scale. Overall, prostitution in Texas' older cities during the 1920s and 1930s
was marked by a far greater variation from town to town than had been the
case between 1870 and 1910.-"
Prostitution reached its most frenetic pace during the interwar years in the
many oil boom towns. Thronged with single men eaming relatively high
wages, towns such as Borger in the Panhandle, Wink and McCamey in West
Texas l and Kilgore in East Texas attracted dozens of prostitutes who moved
with the tide of workers from one oil boom town to another, working in
brothels, rooming houses, hotels, saloons, dance halls, and shacks. While
Wink had about forty-five prostitutes, Borger had 300 when law officers
raided the town in 1929. Prostitutes also found a ready supply of customers in
established oil cities such as Wichita Falls, Corsicana, and Midland.J~
Itinerancy did not characterize the lives of oil-circuit prostitutes alone.
Hardly unusual was the career of twenty-one year old May Belle Ash from
Dallas, who revealed when interviewed at a Galveston brothel in 1929 that she
had operated in the leading hotel~ of most of Texas' larger cities during the
previous four years. If business was good, the hotel management tolerant. and
the city interesting, she had stayed put; if not, she moved on. 33 Many other
prostitutes moved frequently within a single city. A Mexican-born EI Pa.'\o
prostitute entered the trade in 1920 by operating independently for a year in a
small hotel. Then she worked for five months in a modest-sized brothel, saved
enough money to open a house of her own, and catered to hundreds of soldiers
from nearby Fort Bliss before the police closed her down in 1923. Next she
rented a small crib, where her business hoomed on soldiers' paydays. Shut down
once again by the city, she opened a six-room house that lasted for five years,
until 1929, when the police closed it. She and her husband promptly started the
"Silver Dollar," a one-story place with ten or twelve crib-like rooms that
survived for most of the 19305 despite numerous police raids and closings.'4
Many other prostitutes no doubt aspired to the same success, but few
achieved it, although prostitution continues to pay competitively well for
many women. Higher-priced prostitutes charged in the $3 to $5 range. but
even a lower-priced crib prostitute in San Antonio earned more from a single
customer a day than from steady work at hand sewing or pecan shelling. The
road to prosperity was littered with many obstacles, however. Many towns
engaged in erratic but heavy-handed law enforcement that disrupted business,
with pollee raids far more frequent and less predictable than prior to 1910.
During the Depression desperate women flooded the market at a time when
men had less money to spend. LaGrange's best known madam started
accepting chickens instead of cash during the t 930s - and thus the infamous
Chicken Ranch got its name, The high cost of doing business cut heavily into
income. Prostitutes working in brothels and hotels routinely turned over half
or so of their earnings to madams and hotel managers or paid steep room and
34
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCTATTOI\'
board charges or some combination of the two. Pricier women felt compelled
to invest in stylish clothes and beauty treatments to keep up with the
competition. Pimps, who became far more common during the interwar years,
also took a hefty cut. By providing customers, protection against unruly clients
and the police, and emotional support, pimps carved out a role for themselves
that many prostitutes had done without in the age of the semi-official
segregated district. Despite these many hurdles, some prostitutes still made
good money over short periods of time.-"
If prostitution provided mixed financial rewards for prostitutes, it was
viewed by many political officials and prominent citi.lens as good for business
generally. When Dallas realized that Fort Worth was siphoning off many
tourists who might otherwise attend Dallas' Texas Centennial celebration in
1936, city leaders responded by converting Dallas into an "open city." Within
a month the City Health Officer issued 2,400 "health cards" to purported
prostitutes. Officials of many cities justified toleration with familiar
arguments. It was the only practical way to cope with prostitution, claimed the
police chiefs of Galveston, Corpus Christi, and El Paso. Cities and towns
clamped down intermittently on prostitution when it became outwardly
offensive or occurred outside a "Zone of Tolerance" or when its association
with bootlegging and other criminal activities prompted police intervention or
when anti-prostitution groups created a stir, but there was little Progressive
era-type crusading to eliminate the "Social Evil." Some cities required regular
venereal disease examinations and kept prostitution racially segregated, but
even those policies were pursued erratically.-1fi
Late in the 1930s several Texas communities slepped up their efforts to
deal with prostitution and venereal disease by opening municipal VD clinics
and, in the case of El Paso and San Antonio, launching highly publicized antiprostitution campaigns. 3i It took World War II. however, to generate a massive
attack on prostitution, much as had World War 1. Alarmed that venereal disea~e
threatened the fitness of America's fighting force~, the War and Navy
departments once again took dead aim at prostitution near military bases. So
did the newly created Division of Social Protection, a civilian federal agency
headed by crime-fighter Eliot Ness, while Congress did its part by making
prostitution ncar military bases a federal offense. JK
When local base commanders asked Texas towns to crack down on
prostitution, usually threatening to put uncooperative communities off limits,
many towns acquiesced, including Austin, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, EI Paso,
Galveston, and San Antonio. Austin permanently shut down its hotel system for
Anglo prostitutes, while prostitution in San Antonio was "cut to a very low
ebb," according to a series of studies made during the war. Nevertheless,
prostitutes endured in Texa.", cities, finding as the war progressed that local
officials were unable or unwilling to put them out of business entirely.
Galveston's anti-prostitution efforts proved especially erratic. Despite frequent
police roundups of prostitutes, the town had eleven "lavish" houses of
prostitution in 1943 and a "myriad of less pretentious ones," observed the
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EAST TEX AS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Galveston Daily Ne'ri's. Amarillo officials even persuaded the Anny to let them
keep the town's brothels open and handle the VD problem through regulation;'9
The end of World War II brought a resurgence of prostitution in many
Texas communities, but the imprint of its nineteenth century past became
more faint than ever during the decade from 1945 to 1955. Openly tolerated
red-light districts virtually disappeared. So did cribs, while traditional bawdy
houses, another mainstay of the segregated district, grew increasingly atypical
even while persisting longer in Texas than in most other parts of the country.
Many Texas prostitutes operated in hotels (especially "second-rate" hotels),
motels, tourist courts, massage parlors, cafes, taverns, and barrooms. Pimps
played a dominant role in the lives of many prostitutes, while hotel porters,
bellhops, and taxicab drivers conducted a brisk business procuring customers.
As had long been the case, Texas prostitutes were frequently on the move,
often driven out of towns by police crackdowns. Word spread rapidly about
which towns were closed and which open. 4D When city officials sought to close
San Antonio and Houston in 1952, pimps made the rounds of other Texas cities
looking for soft spots. Some pimps and madams rotated prostitutes among
Texas cities in order to have fresh recruits. 41
For decades the many army posts in Texas had provided an abundant
supply of customers for prostitutes. World War II, followed by the onset of the
Cold War, vastly expanded the U.S. military presence in Texas. In addition to
sizable army lnstallations such as Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston, and Fort Hood,
Texas had twenty-seven major Air Force bases and five naval air stations by
1953, the majority of which dated from the 1940s. 42 Growing numbers of
military personnel contributed significantly to the persistence of prostitution in
many Texas communities. Such was not the case in Texas cities on the Mexican
border, however, despite the fact that soldiers at Fort Bliss traditionally
accounted for much of EI Paso's nourishing trade in prostitution. Military
personnel stationed as far away as San Antonio and Corpus Christi continued
to head for the border during the 1940s and 1950s, but military and civilian
customers alike flocked to the flourishing red-light districts across the Rio
Grande - in Cuidad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros - making
it an easier task to curtail prostitution in EI Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville.
4
-\
Elsewhere in Texas during the decade from 1945 to 1955 the extent of
prostitution varied from town to town and fluctuated markedly within individual communities. While Dallas officials tolerated prostitution at a moderate
level, Houston authorities successfully instituted a policy of repression during
the early 1950s. So did officials in Corpus Christi, Harlingen, Amarillo, and
Lubbock between 1951 and 1954, the latter two towns reversing long-term
policies condoning prostitution. Some cities, such a'i Port Arthur, played a
"hide and seek" game with anti-prostitution critics, cleaning up during periods
of bad publicity but relaxing their vigilance as soon as interest subsided "accordion cities," they were called. 44
By far the two most infamous centers of prostitution in Texas during the
post-war years were San Antonio and Galveston. The American Social
36
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Hygiene Association, a national anti-prostitution organization that conducted
regular covert investigations of prosti tution in U, S, communities and pri vatc! y
lobbied local officials to back repression, grew so disgusted with the "wideopen scale" of prostitution in San Antonio that in 1949 it went public with its
survey results - to no avail. The next year a national magazine, drawing on the
association's findings, singled out San Antonio, Galveston, and Canton. Ohio,
as "particularly notorious" exceptions to the nation-wide decline of the "oldfashioned brothe1." Nonetheless, the 1950s saw a shift toward repression in
San Antonio. climaxed in 1955 by the election of a slate of "good government"
officials who vigorously enforced the laws against prostitution.4~
Cleaning up Galveston proved a good deal more difficult. "If God
couldn't stop prostitution. why should IT' declared Galveston's mayor, who
held the post from 1947 to ]955. The mayor wanted Galveston wide open, and
so did his allies and ,upporters, among them the city's powerful racketeers, the
graft-ridden police department, and much of the citizenry, who believed that
Galveston's economy depended on maintaining its reputation for wide-open
gambling, drinking. and prostitution. ''To be respectable in Galveston you
have to support prostitution," remarked one religious leader. The mayor put it
more crudely: some 2,000 seamen vi&itcd the city daily, he stated, and they did
not come to town to go to church. Local anti-prostitution activists found it
difficult to build the kind of support needed to dislodge the "web of
corruption" that controlled the town. While a citizens' committee achieved
some modest gains, even managing to get the decades-old Post Office Street
district closed for a while, in 1955 a representative of the American Social
Hygiene Association branded Galveston the "worst spot in the nation as far as
prostitution is concerned. "4~
Galveston presented anti-prostitution forces with their most difficult
challenge in Texas during the post-war years, but in few Texas towns was their
job an easy one. Travis County's district attorney patiently explained to one
anti-prostitution lobbyist in 1949 that efforts to close two popular brothels near
Austin would inevitably prove futile given the "high position" of the
customers; furthermore, the state capital that did not offer such entertainment
to visiting pohticians and other dignitaries was not measuring up to the
hospitality that was a long-established Texas tradition. Police chiefs and other
city officials across Texa~ offered a variety of reasons for not attacking
prostitution more effectively when pressured by civic and religious leaders,
newspaper editors, representatives from nearby military bases, and the
American Social Hygiene Association. The most common explanation was a
shortage of policemen, a problem aggravated in some towns by rapid
expansion. Some chiefs pleaded difficulty getting convictions or complained
of weak county law enforcement, resulting in unchecked vice operations just
beyond the city limits. Often underlying ineffective law enforcement were
strong political pressures to go easy on vice, payoffs to policemen by vice
interests, and faint public support for repression. 47
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
37
Nevertheless proponents of repression made headway during the 19505.
They publicized flagrant conditions, generated public concern, and joined
forces with cooperative political and law enforcement officials, including a
number of police chiefs who backed repression. Their most glaring failure was
Galveston, but in 1957 the newly-elected state attorney general, Will Wilson,
the fonner crime-busting district attorney of Dallas County, took up their
cause. Using private investigators, court injunctions, search warrants, and
indictments, the attorney general's office broke the back of Galveston's
racketeers. Legal and media pressure forced many brothels to close and set the
volume of prostitution on a downward course that continued into the 1960s. 4 "
Wilson's office also pressed local law enforcement officials into curbing
prostitution in Big Spring, Quero, Texarkana, and Victoria. Even the Travis
County brothels that the district attorney had declined to take on in ] 949 were
closed, but LaGrange's venerable Chicken Ranch proved untouchable. In 1960
the Texas legislature stole some of Wilson's thunder when Speaker of the
House Waggoner Carr, Wilson's major opponent in his re-election bid in 1960,
appointed a House General Investigating Committee that itself launched an
investigation into vice and organized crime in Texas. Jefferson County and its
two leading cities, Beaumont and Port Arthur, became primary targets.
Televised hearings revealed that gambling, prostitution, liquor law violations,
and narcotics traffic operated openly and with immunity from law
enforcement. A thorough house cleaning ensued. 49
AmariJlo's chic f of police commented in 1951 that he favored repression
but that the job would never be done. The head of the Houston Police
Department's Morals Divlsion compared prostitution to weeds springing up
first one place and then another and requiring constant attention. Prostitution
remained a seemingly never-ending law enforcement problem for police
officials at the opening of the 1960s, yet the fact that it was such a problem
reflected an increased commitment to curbing it, not an increase in prostitution
itself. The volume of prostitution in 1960 was lower than it had been in 1950
and was substantially below the level of the interwar years. •'Flagrant
prostitution" - to use a tenn employed by the American Social Hygiene
Association - had become comparatively uncommon. IO Few city officials
contended any longer that segregated districts were an acceptable way to deal
with prostitution and venereal disease.
Yet prostitution was far from moribund. During the 1960s and 1970s city
otlicials hardly expected to extinguish it, given their limited legal tools, scarce
resources, and escalating burden or other crime. Instead they sought to keep
prostitution in check, focusing on its publicly offensive dimensions and its ties
to other criminal activity. Sometimes, as in Dallas in the mid-1970s, the police
resources committed to fighting prostitution were so inadequate and
prostitutes themselves so aggressive that prostitution flourished on a scale
reminiscent of an earlier age. Public demand for repression remained erratic.
While brazen streetwalkers on downtown streets and massage parlors located
near residential areas generated calls for repression on the part of those
affected, sustained and widespread anti-prostitution sentiment was rare. 51
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
38
Prostitution thus remained an integral if less pronounced and less openly
accepted part of the Texas social landscape.
By the 1960s prostitution in Texas had undergone many changes since the
1830s, yet also had retained marked continuity with its nineteenth century
past. In this and other respects, its evolution in Texas paralleled the historical
development of prostitution nationally. Anti-prostitution movements in Texas,
for example, grew for the most pan out of national anti-prostitution campaigns
- among them those of the Progressives, the Federal government in the first
and second world wars, and the American Social Hygiene Association during
the 1950s. Similarly, the targets of their attacks, such as the semi-official
segregated district, reflected national patterns in the organization of
prostitution. Yet, prostitution in Texas was hardly without its regional
variations. The red-light district, with its traditional bawdy houses, for
instance, seems to have become more deeply entrenched and more resistant to
attack in Texas than in many other parts of the country, as reflected in its
legalization in several Texas cities and especially in the extent to which it
survived the Progressive era. By the 1950s the vice districts in San Antonio
and Galveston had become rare relics of a bygone age. Nor was prostitution's
development in Texas unaffected by many of those features that have given
Texas history a distinctive flavor - the cattle kingdom of the nineteenth
century, the oil booms of the twentieth century, the continuous presence of
military troops and bases, and long-standing racial and ethnic divisions among
the citizenry. From the I830s to the I960s the history of prostitution in Texas
thus provides testimony not only to the substantial changes prostitution has
undergone while persisting as a seemingly irremedial public policy issue but
also to the blend of national and the regional strains in Texas life.
NOTES
'Antonio Martinez's list of expatriated women, Aug. 24, 1817, microfilm frame #0338.
General Archives Series. Bexar Archives (Center for American History. University of Texas at
Austin; cited hereafter as CAH); Jose Francisco de la Barreda y Cos to Antonio Martinez, Sept. 6,
1R17, microfilm frame #0500, ibid; Anne M. Butler, Daughters of .I0}·, Siuers of Misery:
Prostitute.s in the American "-est, J865-1900 (Chicago. 1985), p. 4; Anne M. Butler, "The Frontier
Press ami Prostitution: A Study of San Antonio, Tombstone, Cheyenne" (M.A. thesis, Univ. of
Maryland, 1975), p. 22.
2David G.
M<.~Comb.
Galveston: A His/ory
(Au~tin,
1986), p. 151; David G. McComb.
Houslf.m: A Hi~·tory (Austin, 1981), p. 47; Geoffrey Gay, "No Passion for Prudery: Morals
Enforc~ment rn Nineteenth Century Houston" (M.A. thesis, Rice Univ.. 1977), pp. 48-49.
-'Bill Walraven, Corpus Christi: Ihe History of a Texas Seaport (Woodland Hills, Cal..
1982). pp. 42-43; !\ew Orleans Daily True DelUl, Aug. 6. 1850, quoted in CaJeb Coker, ed., The
New~' from Brownsville: Helen ChapmLln s Lel1ers from the Texas Military Frontier. /848-J852
(Austin, 1992), p. 376; Fred Tarpley. Jefferwm: Riverport to the Southwest (Austin, 1983), p. 65;
Brownson Maisch, fndimlOJa: The Mother o/Western Texas (Austin, 1988), p. 95.
lThis generaliziltion is based on an extcnsi vc examination of town and country histories and
other sources on antebellum Texas.
~David C. Humphrey, "Prostitution and Public Policy in Austin, Texas, 1870-1915,
"Southwestern Historical Quarterly (cited hereafter as SHQ), LXXXVI (April 1983). pp. 473497; William L. McDonald, Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle ofUrhatl EXfJa1l.~i()n,
EAST TEXAS HfSTORICAL ASSOCIATION
39
1870-1925 (Dallas, 1978), pro 24-28,48. 169-173: H. Gordon has, The Gentlemen's Club: The
Story ofProstitution In EI Paso <EI Pa<;o. 1983), pp. 12.20-36,76-80.89, 107, 117, 156, 160, 167168, 195; c.L. SOimichsen, Pass of the Nonh: Four Centuries on the Rio Grande (E] Paso, 1968),
pp. 2R3-285; Richard F. Selcer, "Fort Worth and the Fraternity of Strange Women," SHQ, XCVI
(Ju]y 1992), pp. 69-70; Richard E Selcer, Hell~' Half Acre: The Lile and Legend of a Red-Light
DistriCl (FOIt Worth, 194J1), pp. vi-vii. 10-11,20-32,71-81, 123, 150-1nO; Gary Cartwright,
Galveston: A Hi,umy o{tlze hhmd (I\"e\',' York, 1991), p. 205; McComb, Galveston. pp. L08-109;
Thomas C. \-tuckey, Ret! Lights Oul: A Legal History ofProstitution. Dimrderly Houses, and Vice
District'i, 1870-1917 (New York, 1987), pp. 292, 314-315. 396; McComb, Houston, p. 106;
Butler, " Frontier Press." pp. 31-32; Greg Davenport, "The District: Where Vice Was a Virtue,"
Magazine ofSan Antonio (March 1978), pro 50-55; The Blue Bookfor Visitors, Tourists and Those
Seeking a Good Time While in Sari Antonio. Texas (1911 [?]; reprint, San Antonio: Star
Distrihution Co., n.d.), pp. 1-27; Julia Kirk Blackwel&r, \¥tJmen of the Depression: Caste and
Culture in San Antonio, 1929-1939 (College Station, 1984), p. 154; "San Antonio, Texas, Closes
its Segregated District," Social Hygiene, 1 (Sept. 1(15), p. 630; Margaret H. Davis, "Harlots and
Hymnals: A Historic Confrontation of Vice and Virtue in Waco, Texas," Mid-South Folklore. IV
(Winter 1976), pp. g7-91; Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918
(Baltimore, 19H2), pp. 3, 76. 108. 148: Barbara Meil Hobson, Unemy Virtue: The Politics of
Pmstitutiofl and The American Reform Tradition (New York, (nc., 1987), pp. 143-147, 163-164.
"Linda Moore-Lanning, Breaking the Myth: The TrUTh About Texa~ Women (Austin, 1986),
pp. 166-167; W.e. HoLden. "Law and Lawlessness on the Texas rrontier, 1875·1890," SHQ,
XLIV (Oct. 1940). pp. 199-20]; Robelt Wooster, Soldiers, Swlers, and Selt/en: Garrison LIfe on
the Frontier (College Station, 1987), pp. 65, 77, RO. 175; Butler. Dauf?hters. pp. 54-55, 140-145;
William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman,
1967). pp. 72-73; Bill Green, The f)ant'inR
Lively: Fort Concho. Texas: A Social History,
1867-1882 (San Angelo, Tex., 1974). pp. 62-64, 71; Charles M. Robinson, 111, Frontier Fons of
Texas (Houston, 19~6), pp. 67-69.
"as
'KaLharyn Duff, Abilene ... On Cau:faw Creek: A. Pr~fi.le of a We~·t Texas TowII (Abilene,
Tex., 1969). p. 71; Mrs. 1. Lee Jones and Rupert N. Ri<..:hardson, "Colorado City, the Cattlemen's
Capita!," West Texas Historical Association Ye a rhook, XIX (OCl. 1943), pp. 48-49; Tom Goss,
"Colorado, Tun City' of the T&P in 1880s," Ahilene Remembaed: Our Centennial Treasury
Book, 1881-1981 (Abilene, Tex., 1981), p. 75; Joe Pickle, Howard Counly's Firsl25 Years (Hig
Spring, Tex .. 1980). pp. 134-150, 134n3-135n3; Willie Newbul)' Lewis, BI.'I"li'een Sun and Sod: An
Infomwl History of lhe Texas Pmlhandle (College Station, 1976), pp. 43-44, 131-132; Charles
CrudinglOll, "Amarillo's 'Red Light' Di~trict," Earl VandaLe Papers, Box 2H469 (CAR); Hutler,
Dauf.!hters, pp. 55, 74-75; Walter Prescott Webb, II. Bailey Carroll, and Eldon Stephen Hranda
(ed~.), The Handbook of Texm (3 'lois; Austin, 1952,1976), L pp. L 38-39,160.378,11, pp. 220,
708.
bGraham Landrum and Allan Smith. Grayson County: An Illustrated History of Grayson
County, Texas (2nd 00.; Forth Worth. 1967), pp. 37-3R; William D. Leel, Texarktma: A Pictorial
History C\Jorfolk. 1982). pp. 2-33. 37-38: Carl L. Avera. Wind Swept Land (San Antonio, 1964),
pp. 29. 34; Jerry D. TIlOmpson, Warm Weather & Bad Whiske...: The 1886 Laredo Election RiM
(El Paso, 1991), pp. 46-50.
9S anbom Map Collection, Corsicana: 1889, sheet #2; 1984, sheet #6; 1900, :-heel # J8; 1905.
sheet #18; 1910, sheet #20 (CAlI).
"'Walter Rundell, Jr., Early Texas Oil: A Photographic History, 1866-/936 (College Station,
1977), pp. 38-39, 79. 82; James J. Cozine, Jr., "Oil Explomtion in the Big Thicket," Easl Texas
Historical Journal (cited hereafter a<; ETHJ), XVII (#1, 1979). pp. 24, 30-31; Judith Walker
Linsley and Ellen Walker Rien:,lra, BetlumOnl, A Chronicle of Pmmi.'ie: An Illustrated History
(Woodland Hills, Cal., 1982), pp. 80-Hl; Paul E. Isaac, "Municipal Reform in Beaumont, Texas.
1902-1909," SHQ, LXXVlll (April 1975), pp. 410-411,414-416,425.
I'Raymond B. Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (~ew York, 195~),
pp. 135-141; M.J. Exner, "Prostitution in its Relation to the Anny on the Mexican Border," Social
Hygiene, Ifl (April 1(17), pp. 205-213.
hAST ThX AS H ISTOR1L~AL ASSOCIATION
40
I'W. Wnlwonh Hamson, History of Greenville and Hun! County, Te;'((.l~· (Waco. 1977), pp.
388-395; Jan Hutson, 'Jhe Chicken Ranch: The True Story ofthl' Besl Little Whurehuu~'e in Texas
(New York, t 980), pp. 45, 48: Gerald D. Saxon and.r ohn R. Summerville, "The Chicken Ranch:
A H0111e on the Range," Red Ril'f'r Valley Historical Review (cited hereafter as RRVHR), VII
(Winter 1982), p. 34.
"Humphrey, "Prostitution," pp. 4g7-492; Se1cer, "Fort Worth," pp. 60-62,66-68,74-75;
Elizabeth York Enstam, "The Frontier Woman as City Worker: Women's Occupations in Dallas,
Texas. 1856-1f!80," t.'H'J:I, XVIII (#1, ll,lSO), pp. 23-24; Cozine, "Oil Exploration," p. 31; Butler,
DaughteH, pp. 15,54-55, 140-146; Fros(, Gen/lemen's Club, pp, 21-22. 158, 195; Sonnichsen,
Pl/,~S of North, pp. 286, 2%; U.S, Twelfth Census (1900). McLennan Coullty, Texas, Population
Schedules. Waco, Ward #1, Supervisor's Oistriet #9, Enumeration District #70. Sheets #16-#18
Icited hereafter as Waco Population Schedules, 1900) (microfilm; CAH); Hobson, Uneasy Virtue,
pp. 86-87, 106-107; Rosen. Lost Sisterhood, pp. ISO-51.
'"Humphrey, "Prostitution." pp. 488-491; Selcer, "Fort \Vorth," pp. 55-57; Mackey, Red
Lights. pp. 339.375-376, 386n45; F. Ray Tatum, Conquest or Failure? A Biography of J, Frank
N()rri.~ (Dlllta~, 1966). p. 126; Sonnichsen. Pass o/.'v'orth, p. 375; Frost, Gentlemen's Club, pp. 3536, 176; San Antonio Closes its District," p. 630; Texm' Chri~·tian Advocate (Dallas), Nov. 6, 1913;
Mark Thoma<; Connelly, The Response to ProstitUTion in the Progre~sille Era (Chapel Hill, 1980),
pp. 17-22.
"Humphrey, "Prostitution," pp. 4H9-492; Selecr, "Fort Worth." pp, 74-75; Mackey, Red
Lights. p. 3851124.
IOButler, Daughters, pp. 4-5, 142; Blue Book, p. 27; Exner, "Prostitution on Mexican
Border," pp. 20R-211; U. S. l\vclfth Census (l900), El Paso County, Texas, Population Schedules,
EI Paso, Ward #2, Supervisor\ District #5, Enumeration Oistrict #19, Sheets #21, #22, #25, #27,
#30 (cited hereafter m, EI Paso Population Schedules, 1900) (microfilm; CAH); Green, Dancing,
pp. 62. 71; Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them GreIJsers: Anglo AlTitudes Toward Mexicans in
Texw', 1821- J900 (Austin, (9R3), pp. 45-4R.
"Humphrey, "Prostitution," pp. 489-495; Sek~er, ·'Fort Worth," pp. 74-75; Mackey, Red
!.ights, pp. 324, 327, 339-340; Frost. Genth'rnt'n's Club, pp. 64. 156; Waco and EI Paso Population
Schedules, 1900; Robert V. Haynes. "The IIou~ton Mutiny and Riot of 1917," SHQ, LXXVI
(April 1973), pp. 420-421; J.T. Upchurch, Traps for Girl.\' and Those Who SeT Them: An Address
10 Met! Only (5th ed.: Arlington. Tex., 1908) pp. 33-34.
"Hutler, DaughTas, pp. 15,27,42-44,51,54-55,67-68, 151-152, 154; Hobson, Uneasy
Virrw', pp. 86-87,94-109; Rosen, Lost Sisterhuod. pp. 97-100, 144-143; Selcer, lIell's Haft Acre.
pp. 150-15]; Seker, ··hm \;Vorth," pp. 75-82,84; Frost, Gentlemen's Club, pp. 31, 79,87,151;
Sonnichsen, Pa,I',I' (?f North, pp. 282-2R3; Enstam, "Frontier Woman," p. 24; Humphrey,
"Prostitution." pp. 487-492; Exner, "Prostitution on \-1cxkan Harder," pp. 208-211.
"'Crudington, "Amarillo's 'Red Light' District"; Humphrey. "Prostitution." pp. 480, 486,
494-495, 511; Holden, "I,aw and L1wlessness," p. 201; Jones and Richardson, "Colorado City,"
p. 49; Charter and Ordinances of the City of Dallas, Texm' (Dallas, 1884), p. 125; Frost,
Gentiemen:~ Cluh, pp. 22-23,25-27,35-36,77-79,92,94,97-98, 101-102, 106-107, 120, 123,
124, 143, 145, 148-150, 152, 155-156. 160. 174-175, 179-180. 182-183, 188; Sonnichscn, Pass of
the Norrh, pp. 277-27'1'.; Se1cer, Hell:~ Half Acre, pp. 87-90, 110-112, 141-142. 154, 157-160;
Tahlm, Conljr/l'.I'1 or Failure? p. 126; The Character and Revised Ordinances of the City of Fon
n'orrh (Fort Worth, 19(7). p. 247; Gay, ":'-)0 Passion for Prudery," pp. 54-55. 62-63. 70n47;
Mackey, Red Lights. pp. 292,316.361-362, 3f!4nI7, 400; Galveston Tri-Weekly NeH's, Feb. 3,
I H71: l\..1 cComh, Galveston, p. 109; Cartwlight, Gah'~'.I·toll. p. 205; Butler, DauR,hters, p. 5;
Davenport, "The District," p. 55; Oavis, "Hnrlo(s," pp. 90-91; Aimee Harris Johnson,
"Prostitution in Waco, 1889- ] 91 T' (M. A. thesis, Baylor Univ., 1990), pro 40-41.
"'Davis, "Harlots:' pp. H7-92; Johnson, ·'Prostitution in Waco," pp. 67-78; Waco bawdy
house register (Texas Collection, Haylor University); J. T. Upchurch, Tmps for Girl~' and nW~'e
Who Set Them: 1\11 Address to Men Only (3rd ed., Dallas, 1Y(4), preface, p. 19: Upchurch, Traps
jiJr Girls (5th ed.), preface, pp. 11-12. 22-23. 45; Sanborn Map Colledion, Waco: 18(.)3, "heets #2
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOClATION
41
and #3, and 1899, sheets #2 and #3. See the third edition of Cpchurch's Traps for Girls for
evidence that Waco stopped licensing prostitutes by 1904 at the latest.
"Frost, Gentlemen's Club, pp. 76-80, 189-190.
I'Mackey, Red Lights, pp. 293-296, 320-321, 404-408; The Code ofthe City ojD[)llas, Texas
(Dallas, 1911) pp. 183-1841 McDonald, Dallas, p. 169.
1.·'Butler, "Frontier Press," pp. 23-27; Selecr, "Fort Worth," p. 83: Seker. Hell's Half Acre,
pp. 203.217; Frost, Gentlemen ~\ Cluh, pp. 80,88-89,92-94, 117-119, 125-126, 145-150, 157-160;
Isaac, "Moral Reform," pp. 414, 417, 424-426; Humphrey. "Prostitution:' pp. 483-4R4, 50 I ;
Houston, Chronicle, March 6, 1908; Upchurch, Traps for Girls, 5th ed., passim; Em.tam, "Frontier
Woman," p. 23;1 John L. McCarty. Maverick lawn: The Story of Old Tascom (Nonnan, 1946),p.
100.
!'Harrison, History of GreenvilJe. pp. 392-395; Holden, "Law and Lawlessness," pp. 200201; Sclcer, Hell's Half Aoc-, pp. 219-221; Elizabeth York Enstam, "Virginia K. Johnson: A
Second Chance for the "'Wayward,'" Herita/{e News (Summer 1985), pp. 6-7; Donald E. Everett,
San Antonio: The Flavor of its Past, 1845-1898 (San Antonio, 1975), p. 103; Baptist Standard
(Dallas), Oct. 16, 1913; Johnson, "Prostitution in Waco," p. 36.
"Humphrey, "Prostitution," pp. 501-514; Connelly, Response to Prostitution, pp. 11-18;
Tatum, Conquest or Failure? pp. 125-139; San Antonio Ught, Nov. 3, 1913; Austin, Church
Nms, Nov. 7, 1913; Baptist Standard (Dallas), Aug. 21, Sept. 25, 1913; Texas Christian Advocate
(Dallas), Aug. 28, Oct. 9, Nov. 6, 1913; J. T. Upchurch, The Unchained Demon, And, The Tribute
Dallas, Texas, Pays to Vice (Arlington. Tex., (912), passim; Dallas Morning News. Sept. 22, ~ov.
4, 1913; Home and State (Dallas), Aug. 2, Ocl. 4, 1913; McDonald, Dallas. p. 169; Frost,
Gentlemen:~ Club, pp. 174-192; Sonnichsen, Pa,H" of North. pp. 375-377; Houston Daily Post.
Nov. 20, 1913; Daily Texan (Austin), Nov. 22, 1913; Crudington, "Amarillo's 'Red Light'
District"; "San Antonio Closes Di strict," pp. 629-630; Mackey, Red Lights, pp. 301-309, 314-3 16;
Waco Times Herald, Sept. R, Oct 12,1913; De Leon, San Angelenos, pp. 43-44.
!'David J. Pivar. "Cleansing lhe Nation: The War on Prostitution. 1917-21," Prologue.
XXVIII (Spring 1980), pp. 30-33; "Zones of Safely: Texas Cantonment Cities Made Safe for
Health and Decency," The Survey, XXXVIII (July 14, 1917), pp. 349-350: Connelly, Response. to
Prostitution, pp. 136-150; Hobson, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 167, 176-181; Fosdick. Chronicle, pp. 145147; Austin American, May 30. July 15,1917; William E. Jary, Jr., ed .• Camp Bowie, Fon Worth,
1917-/8: An Illustrated History of the 36th Division In The First World War (Fort Worth, 1975),
pp.4. 19; Gama L. Christian, "Newton Baker's War on EI Paso Vice," RRVHR, V (Spring 19RO),
pp. 55-67; Frost. Gentlemen's Club, pp. 194-196; Granville Price, "A Sociological Study of a
Segregated DistricC' (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1930), pp. 63-70. 78; McComb.
Galveston, pp. 152-155; Cartwright, Galveston, pp. 205-206; Mackey, Red Lights, pp. 353-379,
392; San Antonio Express, June I, 3, 5, 6, 11, 12, 17, 18, 1917; Blackwelder, Women oj
Depression, p. 154; Davis. "Harlots," pp. 92-93; Waco TImes Herald, June II, Aug. 6, 10. 17,
1917.
17Connelly. Response to Prostitution, pp. 26, 153; Rosen, roOst Sisterhood. pp. 32-33:
Hobson, Uneasy Virtue, pp. 156-158, 163-164; Humphrey, "Prostitution," p. 514; Blackwelder.
Women ofDepression, p. 155; James R. Ward, "Establishing Law and Order in the Oil Fields: The
1924 Ranger Raids in Navarro County, Texas," Texana, VIII (No. t. 1970), p. 43; Price,
"Sociological Study," pp. 25-29, 44; Walter Clarke, Report on EI Paso, March 17-18, 1930. folder
109: 10, American Social Health Association Rec()rd~ (cited hereafter as ASHAR) (Social Welfare
History Archives. University of Minnesota Libraries); Frost, GenJit'men~' Club. pp. 209, 217;
Roger M. alien and Diana Davids Olien, Life in the Oil Fields (Austin, 1986), p. 220; Ray
Vaughn, "A Study of Professional Prostitution as a Criminal Behavior System" (M. A. thesis,
Univ. of Texas at Austin. 1965), pp. 19, 68, 83.
"Linsley and Rienstra, Beaumont, p. 114; Whitcomb Allen, Report on Beaumont, Feb. 6-8,
1951, folder 110:3. ASHAR; alien and alien, Life in Oil Field~', p. 214; Bob Ramsdell, "Some
Virtue and Some Vice Trailed Taylor's Troops," Corpus Christi Caller Centennial Journey
(Corpus Christi, 19H3), p. 102; Gerald Lynch, Roughnecks. Drillers. and Tonl Pushers: Thirty-
42
EAST TEXAS HlSTORlCAL ASSOCIATION
Three Years in the Oil Fields (Austin, ] 9R7), pp. 23-25; W. Allen and Howard Slutes, Report on
Dalla:., July 18-19. 1949. folder 110: 1, ASHAR: McDonald, Dallas, p. 26: Frost, Gmtlemen s
Club, pp. 199-236; McComb, Galveswn, pp. 155-157: Dc Uon, San AnNelell0j, pp. 42, 50;
Blackwelder. Women of Depression, pp. 152-156.
19price, "Sociological Stud)'." pp. 7-8, 11-12,14,16-21,53.72-84.
"'Blackwelder, Women vf Depressioll, pp. 152-161; Ralph Maitland, "San Antonio: the
Shame of Tex.as:' Forum and Century, CII (Aug. 1939), pp. 54-55; Davenport, "The District." pp.
51-55; Richard A. Garcia, Rise vf the Mexican American Middle Class: San Antonio, 1929-1941
(College Station, 1991). p. 40; Clarke, Report on San Antonio. Dec. 8. 1933, folder 109: 10,
ASHAR.
"'Humphrey, "Prostitution," p. 5 [4; Robert B. Laws to D.C.H., May 21. June 5, JUly 16,
1980, interviews; Robert B. Laws and Anna Belle Laws [0 Janet G. Humphrey, March 13, 1991,
interview.
"Olien and Olien. Life in the Oil Fields, pp. 213-224; Roger M, Olien and Diana Davids
Olien, Oil Bovms: Social Clumge in Five Texas Towns (Lincoln. 19R2), pp. 127-142; Ward,
"Estahlishing Law," pp. 38-43; Lynch, Roughnech, pp.• 23-27; Paul F. Lambert and Kenny A.
Franks, eds., Voices from the Oil Fields (Norman, 1984), pp. 150-155; Robert A. Calvert and
Arnoldo De Leon, The History of Texas (Arlington Heights. Ill., 1990), p. 295.
"Price, "Sociological Study," pp. 42-45.
·"'Frost, Ge'ltlemen:f Club, pp. 203-207.
"Price, "Sociological Study," pp. 12-13,25-27.37-38; Blackwelder, Women of Depression,
pp. 153, 156; Frosl, Gentlemen's Club, pp. 199-236; Robert B. Laws to D.CH.. June 5, 1980,
interview; alien and alien, LIfe in the Oil Fields. pp. 213-219; Ward, "Establishing Law," pp. 3946; Hutl.on, Chicken Ranch, pp. 54-55; Saxon and Summerville, "Chicken Ranch," pp. 36-37;
Hobson, Uneasy \1rtue, pp. 163-164; Ro~en, LlHt Sisterhood, p. 33; Charles Winick and Paul M.
Kinsie, The Lively Commerce: Prostitution in the United States (Chicago. 1971), pp. 109-120.
"Kenneth B. Ragsdale, Centennial '36: The Year America Discovered Texa,~ (College
Station. 1987). pp. 287-288; Price, "Sociological Study." pp. 31-32, 72-84; Robert B. Laws lO
D.C.H., June 5, 1980, interview; Ramsdell, "Some Virtue," p. 102; Frosl, Gentlemen:s Club. pp.
199-238.214; Davenport. "The District," p. 55; Olien and Olien, Oil Booms, pp. 131-132; Ward,
"Establishing Law," pp. 38-43; Connelley, Response to Prostitution, pp. 14, 153; Maitland, "San
Antonio," pp. 54-55; Blackwelder. Women afDepression, pp. 154-159; \1cComb. Ga{\'esron, p.
157; Clarke, Report Dec. 7-10,1933. folder 109:10, ASHAR.
); "Annual Repon, City Health Deparlment, Austin, Texas. 1940" (CAH); McComb.
Galveston. p. 157; Frost, Gentlemen:\ Club, pp. 221-227; Blackwelder. Women ofDepre.uion. pp.
152, 153-154, 161; Pat Rooney and ESlher Sweeney, Report on San Antonio. June 7, 1946, folder
109:1 L. ASHAR; Ramsde[1. "Some Virtue," p. 102.
"Winick and Kinsie. Lively Commerce, pp. 253-257,
"Austin American, May 9, 1942; Austin Statesman, May 13. 1942; Robert B. Laws to
D.eH., June 5, 1980, interview; "Prostitution Almost Ni I Within Austin," May 19, 1951, folder
110:3, ASHAR; Linsley and Rienstra, Beaumom, p. 114; Allen, Report on Beaumont, Feb. 6·8,
1951, folder 110:3, ASHAR; Ramsdell, "Some Virtue." p. 102; Allen, Report on Corpus Christi.
Dec. 10. 1948, folder 109:11, ASHAR; Frost, Gentlemen's Club, pp. 239-253; McComb,
Galveston, pp. 157-158; Galveston Daily News, Jan. 9. 1943; Rooney and Sweeney. Report on
San Antonio. June 7. 1946, folder 109: 11. ASHAR: Davenport, ''The District," pp. 55; Albert
Curtis, Fabulous San Antonio (San Antonio, ]955), p. 39; Allen, Report on Amarillo, Jan. 15-18,
1951, folder 110:3, ASHAR.
.oAllen, Report on Fort Worth, Mar. 27-28,1953. folder 110:5. ASHAR; Frost. Gentlemen'J
Club, p. 261; Winick and Kinsie. l.iveLy Commerce. pp. 162-163; Vaughn. "Professional
Prostitution:' pp. 137, 150-152, 157-158,160.164,166. The statements in this and the next six
paragraphs are based largely on a dose examination of hundreds of field reports on Texas cities
hy representatives of the American Social Hygiene Association, 1946-1956. See folders 106:3.
109: 10-109: 11, and 110: 1-11 0:8. ASHAR.
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCTATION
43
4lAllen, Report on Amarillo, April 23-25, 1952, folder 110:4, ASHAR; Robert B. Laws to
D.C.H.. June 5. 1980. inLerview; Robert B. Laws and Anna Helle Laws to Janet G. Humphrey.
~1arch 13. 1991. interview.
-;'Thas Almanac. 1954-1955: The Encyclopedia I"?f1'exas (Dallas, 1953), pp. 279-82.
"Folder (L 15;2,) "International Activities. Mexican Border Cities, 1947-51," passim.
ASHAR; Raymond Sanford, Report on Brownsville. Feb. 4-March 19, 1952, and Report on
Laredo, March 20-April 7, 1952. folder 110:4, ASHAR; Siules, Report on 1::::1 Paso, Aug. 1949,
folder 110:1, ASHAR; Allen, Report on El Paso, Mar. 12-14, 1951. folder 110:3, ASHAR; Allen,
Report on San Antonio, June 20,1952, folder J 10:4, ASHAR; Allen, Report on EI Paso, Jan. 6-79. 1953. folder 110:5. ASHAR: Frost. Gentlemen:" Club, pp. 260-261, 268-269, 288-289.
~W. Allen and R.D. Warfield. Report on Port Arlhur, Dec. 1:;. 1951, folder 110: 3, and Allen
and Warfield, Report on Dallas, Dec. 9-10, 1951, folder llO:3, ASHAR. Sec also note 40.
4lAllen, News Release, ca. Nov. 1949, folder 110: 1, ASHAR; E. Cunroy to S. Lang, Oct. 6,
Oct. 31, 1950, folder 106:3, ASHAR: Allen, Report on San Amonio. June 25. 1951, folder 110:3,
ASHAR; Allen, Report on San Antonio, April 17-25. 1953, folder 110:4. ASHAR; Simes, Reports
on San Anronio, Aug. 3-6. Sept. 27-30,1954, Sept. 1-1\ov.15. 1955, folder 110:6, ASHAR; Slutes,
Report on San Antonio, May 5-Dec. 31,1956, folder 110:7, ASHAR.
46Cartwrighl. Galveston. pp. 24D-247. 249-255; VlcComb, Galveston, p. 158; Sanford.
Reports on Galveston, Feb. 2,5-6,6.23, 1949, folder 110:1, ASHAR; Allen, Report on Galveston,
June 20-29, 1950. folder 110:2, ASHAR; Allen. Report on Galveston. June 21-22, 1951. folder
110:3, ASHAR: Allen, Report on Galveston, Feb. 7-R, Mar. 13, 1952, folder 110:4, ASHAR;
Slutes, Report on Galveston, July 1-9, 1953. folder 1l0:5, ASHA (see folder 110:5 for Slutes'
frequent, detailed, very informalive field reports on Galveston during 1953); Slutes, Filed Report
on Galveston, Jan. 21-22, June 30-July 1. 1954. folder 110:6; Fort Worth Evening Star Telegram,
May 25, 1955. folder 110:8. ASHAR; S1ules. Report on Galveston, Mar. 5-6, 1956. folder 110:8,
ASHAR.
~'Slutes,
Report on Southem Region, Dec. 1-2,6-8, 1949, folder 110:1 ASHAR. See also
nole 40.
"bCartwright, Galves/oll. pp. 255-61: Auslin American, May 1, 195~, "Wilson, Will."
Vertical File (CAH): Slutes, Reports on Galveston. Dec. 14. 1956. Oct. 23-30, 1957, ~ar. 24,
1960, News Release, Aug. 8, 1957, folder 110:8, ASHAR; Slutes, Report on Texas, Nov. 6-Dec.
23, 1959, folder 110:7. ASHAR. See also note 40.
9
4 Slutes, }{cports on Texas, Nov. 25, Dec. 19, 1958, Nov. 6-Dec. 23, 1959. folder 110:7,
ASHAR; Slutes, Reports on Galveston, Vlar. 24, Apr. 14, 1960, folder 106:8, ASHAR; Auslin.
American-Statesman, Jan. :23, 1961; "James, Rep. Tom," Vertical File (CAH); Linsley and
Riens[fa, Beaumont, pp. 114-117.
IOAllen, ReporL on Amari II u. Aug. 10, 1951. folder 110:3, ASHAR: Allen. Report on
Southern Region, April 15-28, 1949. fokler 110: I. ASHAR; "For AM Release," ca. No\'. 1955,
folder 110:8. ASHAR.
5lS ee, for example, Dallas Morning News, June 23,1974; Austin American-StQtesman. Nov.
23,24,25, 1975, April 9, Sept. 9.23, 19RO, .Iuly 5, 1991, Sept. 20, 1984, Mar. 25.30, 1985: River
City Sun, Sept. 1. 1978.